An exciting night on this "bonus" Audiopollination, which featured three sets with pianist Tim Crofts, visiting from Halifax. The night featured a short solo set sandwiched in between some encounters with local improvisers — first with Nilan Perera (prepared guitar) and Ted Philips (cataRT) and later with Pete Johnston (double bass) and Nicole Rampersaud (trumpet). They each managed to push in separate directions under Croft's variety of techniques, including some tasty prepared piano work.

It's always exciting to have a chance to see creative musicians come to town to encounter old friends and make new musical connections — a difficult task at the scale this music tends to operate at. This show was made possible through the efforts of circuit, a "curated grassroots music performance network" that helps improvising musicians to tour across Canada's artist-run spaces. Clearly, this sort of cultural sharing is something we could use more of.

[The series continues tonight (Sunday March 1st) with Audiopollination #28.1 — that decimal point indicating multiple shows this month. The second isn't listed yet, but you can make plans for 28.3 (featuring Tiina Kiik, William Davison, Faster and Aalborggroup)]

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Founded as a blog about one curmudgeon's love affair with the em dash, Mechanical Forest Sound has grown to become a community-based archive of local musical culture. Assuming that "independent music" isn't just boys with guitars and "culture" isn't just some sort of pageant, MFS is an investigation of a wide range of artists, reflecting on concerts as shared experiences, acts of citizenship and a chance to get down — fuzzy photographs and clear-sounding original live recordings a specialty.

Current manifestations of this project include Track Could Bend, a monthly concert series featuring "improvised music and weird rock offshoots", presented in a casual environment.

At one point I wrote full-on concert reviews, and for longer I thought I would catch up and write about shows in the past. But these days, because of, y'know, life, do not expect much in the way of full show reviews — but live recordings with blurbs will be posted as quickly after the fact as is feasible.

All MP3's on this blog are audience recordings shared as a reminder of the excitement of seeing live music. If you are an artist who doesn't want their music shared in this way, please contact me and I shall remove it forthwith.